Ryan Keberle’s Collectiv do Brasil - Considerando (2023) [Hi-Res]

“I love that early and mid-70s period when there was this explosion of the most creative songwriting. So many of the Brazilian songwriters were able to do their thing, and Edu was at the center of it,” says the New York-based Keberle. “Edu was there in the beginning in the ’60s with the Quarteto Novo, the first time artists combined, jazz, Brazilian folk and pop, and just blew open the world for Brazilian composers.”

Considerando follows in the footsteps of Collectiv do Brasil’s acclaimed 2022 debut release Sonhos da Esquina, a ravishing celebration of Milton Nascimento, Toninho Horta and the landmark Minas Gerais-centered Clube da Esquina collective. The project features the original members, drummer Paulinho Vicente and pianist Felipe Silveira (who also contributes three arrangements), with Felipe Brisola taking over the bass chair from Thiago Alves, who had enrolled in a prestigious Swiss jazz program.

“This trio had been performing together their entire adult lives, playing three or four nights a week for more than a decade creating this shared language that we just don’t the opportunity to do here,” Keberle says. “Thiago was in Europe when we toured and recorded this new material and they’d replaced with him with Felipe. Of course, I trust them completely.”

The trust and commitment to creating an improvisation-laced musical world around Lobo’s ingenious compositions is evident throughout the album’s 10 tracks, which include original arrangements of seven Lobo songs. Drawing heavily from his classic 1971 album Sergio Mendes Presents Lobo, the album opens with the crackling “Zanzibar,” an arrangement that exemplifies the Brazilian jazz/jazz Brazilian conversation at the heart of the Collectiv collaboration.

On the title track, a sensuous Lobo ballad, the quartet delivers a simple statement sans improvisation with Keberle caressing the melody with all the late-night rue of Frank Sinatra. He croons another gorgeous Lobo ballad, “Toada”, (written with the late Minas composer Cacaso) with a tone so lithe and burnished it might surprise even close listeners to his previous recordings. Silveira’s elegant arrangement of one of Lobo’s best known tunes, “Pra Dizer Adeus,”¬– introduced in 1966 by Elis Regina and recorded memorably in 1979 by Sarah Vaughan as “To Say Goodbye”– offers another opportunity for Keberle to lean into his seamless legato phrasing.

“It’s not something I’ve gotten to realize in other settings,” says Keberle, a capaciously inspired composer whose discography encompasses a dozen albums exploring chamber jazz, post-bop, big band and various Latin jazz amalgams in an array of unusual instrumental combos.

“I’ve discovered how much I love to play that role of vocalist. I really strive to find ways to sing these melodies. It’s good timing because I’m a better musician than I was a decade ago. I’m much better prepared to make this kind of statement now.”

Keberle offers his own distillation of Lobo’s blend of jazz harmonies and Brazilian lyricism with “Edu,” a piece he wrote just before flying south, after months of reorchestrating Lobo’s music and inhabiting his sonic realm. He reimagined “Gallop,” a tune originally released on his 2014 Catharsis album Into the Zone set to a Uruguayan Candombe groove, with more of a samba beat, while retaining the sing-song contours that seem to call out for a lyric.

Paulinho Vicente contributed “Be,” a patient, melancholic ballad that unfurls with a tightly focused narrative. And in a direct response to Sergio Mendes Presents Lobo, which concludes with a folky rendition of “Hey Jude,” Keberle closes out Considerando with an arrangement of Lennon and McCartney’s “Blackbird” centering on a Silveira solo that’s a model of melodic concision.

As a love letter to Edu Lobo, Considerando shines a welcome spotlight on a Brazilian master who should be better known in North America. As the latest dispatch in an ongoing correspondence, it’s a harbinger of more beauty to come, tracking the process of discovery that draws Keberle in ever deeper. In the Collectiv do Brasil, Keberle has found the ideal companions for this ongoing adventure.

Ryan Keberle - trombone, arrangements
Felipe Silveira - piano, arrangements for Tracks 2, 7 & 8
Felipe Brisola - bass
Paulinho Vicente - drums